Wes Craven is the director of SCREAM as well as a
bunch of other horror movies-including A NIGHTMARE on ELM St.!
He is one of the best directors their is and I couldn't have been happier when I heard that he would be directing SCREAM 2 and possibly SCREAM 3!!! He will do anything to get his scene right. It is even said that he kept reminding Drew Barrymore of this cat being lit intentionally on fire by a human and it sure did keep her looking scared and upset during her whole scene!
He also had a cameo roll in SCREAM! He was the
janitor who's name was Fred and he had a red and green striped shirt on and a brown
tattered hat=) When I heard that it was actually Wes in that costume--it made it even better!
He is so nice--he even answers some fan mail at his site!
Wes Craven Article
The success of Scream can be attributed to Kevin Williamson for writing the script of course but theres also Wes Craven, the veteran horror director who hadn't had a big hit since all the way back in 1984 with A Nightmare on Elm St. Wes was familiar with the business and hadn't had a smash hit in ages. He'd done The People Under the stairs in 1991, A vampire in Brooklyn in 1995 and then finally Wes Craven's New Nightmare in 1994-but none seemed to do so well. Why is this? Well-Wes didn't have a script written by Kevin Williamson who mainly wrote Scream for a younger audience, who truly is the audience watching these movies in the first place. Kevin presented something that had been lost in horror movies for such a long time and was simply not found in recent horror films such as Candyman and its sequel, From Dusk till Dawn, Tremors and its sequel and the last installment in the Pinhead movies- Hellraiser: Bloodline. Which is the slasher killers where love sick teenagers get chopped to pieces. And thats what us teens really want-we want to see our peers getting cut up by the monsters that we feared so much when we were children. With Kevin's script and Wes' knowledge of the business-Scream was sure to be a big hit-I'm shocked they even called it the 'Surprise hit of the year'.
When Scream was first presented to Craven, he was actually working on a remake of the 1963 supernatural chiller, The Haunting in an effort to reach a "broader audience". It quickly became apparent though that Scream had the potential to become more than just another forgotten effort to revive the lost horror genre. The main attraction and first distinguishment that it wouldn't be ignored in the horror history of lousy movies was Williamson's quick witted script.
"I think he [Kevin Williamson] hit a home run his first time out. It's entertaining, it's fun, it's not trying to make a heavy statement," Wes says in regard to Scream, "It's got enough substance to make it interesting if you want to apply thought to it. And it's also a great ride."
And while Scream and Scream 2 have only assisted in the reinforcement of the opinion among his critics that he must be a pathological demented lunatic, he remains resolutely cheerful about his antisocial reputation.
"Horror is the part of humanity that's nit rational, not civilized, not under control," Wes
says. "You have the perfect myth, and then you have this unspeakable violence. People are
fascinated by that sort of paradox, not knowing how the hell it happened or why it
happened or why it makes absolutely no sense.
"Most people who make horror films are not maniacs," he says. "When I first meet someone and they come to my house, they say, 'Oh My God, I was expecting Charles Manson, or you living in a cave.' Horror films are usually done by people couched in a very polite society, like ex-college professors-people who are well read and lead rather middle class lives. You're not rewarded by and large. The usual reaction to our films in the 70s and 80s was, 'My God!'.
"There's always this tension between wanting to move on, to do things that are more 'adult' or 'sophisticated' and making films that come from places that are uncomfortable to be in, socially. Until Scream, it was an art form where you were laboring at something that was appreciated by an audience that usually was not your peers. The audience was far younger than you."
Whats this I talk about people thinking Wes is something similar to Charles Manson? Well-thats credited to all the gore which is seen in the films that Wes makes. And in Scream 2, which was Craven's last project (besides Scream 3) he worked on, there are a few blood-soaked set-ups.
"He does like it gruesome when it has to be," says David Arquette of Craven. "He's not afraid touse the corn syrup"-but the audience is show the aftermath of the murders rather than the acts themselves. On the set though-Craven's attitude is the more blood the better.
"You should see Wes when there's a big murder scene. He's sitting there by the monitor,
he's a madman," says Arquette, letting out a maniacal laugh to demonstrate Craven's
enthusiasm. "Only not that loud, because Wes never screams."
Another detail to point out about how Wes isn't the homicidal maniac his films make him out to be is the fact that Wes went out with the Scream 2 actors when they went on their weekend excursions to the bars in the Atlanta area while shooting. "He's great like that," says Arquette. "He's really a child at heart. He likes to dance, Wes can cut it up!"
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This page was last updated on April 18th 1997